The zeros and ones of machine code seem to offer themselves as a perfect symbols of the orders of Western reality, the ancient logical codes which make the difference between on and off, right and left, light and dark, form and matter, mind and body, white and black, good and evil, right and wrong, life and death, something and nothing, this and that, here and there, inside and out, active and passive, true and false, yes and no, sanity and madness, health and sickness, up and down, sense and nonsense, west and east, north and south

We have an ingrained tendency to see everything in the world in terms of opposites.

Having heard the poem, Monkey went up to him and said, "Master, you only know about the moon's beauty, and you're homesick too. You don't know what the moon's really about. It's like the carpenter's line and compasses??it keeps the heavenly bodies in order. On the thirtieth of every month the metal element of its male soul has all gone, and the water element of its female soul fills the whole disk. That is why it goes black and has no light. That's what is called the end of the old moon. This is the time, between the last day of the old moon and the first of the new, when it mates with the sun. The light makes it conceive. By the third day the first male light is seen, and on the eight day the second male light. When the moon's male and female souls each have half of it, the moon is divided as if by a string. That is why it is called the first quarter. On the fifteenth night, tonight, all three male lights are complete, and the moon is round. This is called the full moon. On the sixteenth the first female principle is born, followed on the twenty?second by the second. At this stage the two souls are matched again and the moon is again divided as if by a string. This is what is called the third quarter. By the thirtieth the three female principles are complete, and it is the last day of the old moon. This is what is meant by 'prenatal absorption and refinement'. If we are all able gently to raise the 'double eight' and achieve it in nine by nine days, it will be easy to see the Buddha and easy to go home again too.

Old Chinese way of thinking about the moon, with the bright side as yang and the dark side yin.